This is an interview I conducted with veteran journalist Bill Weinberg on April 23, 2025. Bill is an author, journalist and blogger. He is the author of Homage to Chiapas: The New Indigenous Struggles in Mexico and War on the Land: Ecology and Politics in Central America. His work has been published in the The Progressive, In These Times, Al Jazeera, NACLA Report on the Americas, Miami Herald and Indian Country Today. Bill is the host of the CounterVortex podcast and he runs the CounterVortex blog and news service. CounterVortex is one of my favorite podcasts and it has often been my go-to source when I want to learn about the nuances of events happening in places like Burma, Burkina Faso, Mali, Gaza, Ukraine, Somalia or Venezuela. In this episode, Bill and I discuss the most consequential aspects of the increasingly authoritarian Trump government including the current and future human costs of cutting foreign aid and dismantling the US Agency for International Development (USAID) if foreign aid is not restored, the crackdown on free speech, the denial of due process and the Trump's administration's use of a notorious prison in El Salvador as an unconstitutional answer to it's strategy of mass deportations. Bill also discusses why he considers Trump an illegitimate president, and the potential of anti-Trump protests that have broken out around the country. Bill and I also discuss the genocide in Gaza, and the potential of anti-Hamas and anti-Netanyahu protests that have occurred in Gaza and Israel. We also discuss how the weaponization of antisemitism by the Trump administration is hypocritical and distracts from actual antisemitism while also suppressing free speech.

Bill Weinberg adds: "Contrary to what I imply at 33 minutes, no student activists have been abducted to El Salvador, of course.... Just the accused gang-bangers. Student activists have been abducted, but not to El Salvador (thank goodness!)"

I hope everyone enjoys the show.